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But in this instance, a public prosecutor in Milan decided to indict four Google employees —David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes (who left the company in 2008). The charges brought against them were criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video's existence until after it was removed.

At this point, most people laughed at and ridiculed the Italian prosecution. It frankly seemed asinine. The punchline?

An Italian court has convicted three Google executives in a trial over a video showing an autistic teenager being bullied.

The Google employees were accused of breaking Italian law by allowing the video to be posted online.

Judge Oscar Magi absolved the three of defamation but convicted them of privacy violations.

The UK's former Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said the case gave privacy laws a "bad name".

The three employees, Peter Fleischer, David Drummond and George De Los Reyes, received suspended six-month sentences, while a fourth defendant, product manager Arvind Desikan, was acquitted.

David Drummond, chief legal officer at Google and one of those convicted, said he was "outraged" by the decision.

'Ridiculous case'

ANALYSIS
Jane Wakefield
Jane Wakefield, BBC News technology reporter

The guilty verdict has left Google outraged and much of the net community concerned about the ramifications

If firms can be held liable for every piece of content on their site they would face a nigh-on impossible job of policing and vetting everything before publication.

Many question how the Italian prosecutors decided which employees to target and most agree the four it settled on were random choice with none living in Italy or having direct responsibility for the video in question. George De Los Reyes was Google's chief financial officer but no longer even works for the firm.

Google says it has no plans to pull out of Italy and that it will vigorously appeal the case.

At the moment there is no indication that a similar case could or would be brought in any other European country.

Italy does seem determined to pursue such cases though and similar ones are ongoing against other net giants, such as eBay, Yahoo and Facebook. Its motives in pursuing such cases are less clear.

"I intend to vigorously appeal this dangerous ruling. It sets a chilling precedent," he said.

"If individuals like myself and my Google colleagues who had nothing to do with the harassing incident, its filming or its uploading onto Google Video can be held criminally liable solely by virtue of our position at Google, every employee of any internet hosting service faces similar liability," he added.

Peter Fleischer, privacy counsel at Google, questioned how many internet platforms would be able to continue if the decision held.

"I realise I am just a pawn in a large battle of forces, but I remain confident that today's ruling will be over-turned on appeal," he said.

Richard Thomas, the UK's former information commissioner and consultant to privacy law firm Hunton & Williams, said the case was "ridiculous".

"It is like prosecuting the post office for hate mail that is sent in the post," he told BBC News.

"I can't imagine anything similar happening in this country. The case wasn't brought by the Italian equivalent of the information commissioner but by criminal prosecutors and we don't know their motives.

"I find it worrying that the chief privacy officer who had nothing to do with the video has been found guilty. It is unrealistic to expect firms to monitor everything that goes online."

Seeking consent

The verdict is likely to have ramifications for content providers around the globe.

Google said at the trial that pre-screening all YouTube content was impossible.

The video at the centre of the case was posted on Google Video in 2006 shortly before the firm acquired YouTube.

Prosecutors argued that Google broke Italian privacy law by not seeking the consent of all the parties involved before allowing it to go online.

Google's lawyers said that the video was removed as soon as it was brought to its attention and that the firm also provided information on who posted it.

As a result four students were expelled from their school in Turin, northern Italy.

The possible implications:

Nevertheless, a judge in Milan today convicted 3 of the 4 defendants — David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes — for failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. All 4 were found not guilty of criminal defamation. In essence this ruling means that employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are criminally responsible for content that users upload.

Let's have a good laugh at Italy and their scooters, organized crime and fashion, which seem to be the only 3 things they are doing well!
Very difficult to say which is more maddening, that those people were convicted, or that the reason for the conviction is a "privacy law". This is very unlikely to stand, as the current EU communications legislation has a special exemption for "service providers", but it's still a very annoying decision, IMO, and we can only hope that other EU nations don't get the same idea.

Such a stupid ruling. It's not even like the company refused to remove the material, they cooperated entirely and random execs get sued for... helping the government?

I'm not even sure how you can demand people proactively remove any offensive material from upload sites or comment pages. Why not just sue any company for being an accessory to crimes committed on their property?

1) The manner in which the vague and largely meaningless term "privacy" can be wielded in the judiciary to rule for or against any damned thing you can imagine.

2) Greedy depsicable leeches in European and S. American governments who look for any way they can to attack or rob American global corporations.

3) The deeply rooted assumption that "hey, it's the Internet, we can't be held responsible for what goes on on our servers!"

Yes, we've discussed it you and me(re:Verizon's newsgroups, I believe).
You were completely ignorant in regards of letter of the law regarding ISP and web service providers in the EU or the US then and while I understand that you still hate the situation, there are safe harbor provisions in every communications act out there. Nothing is more reasonable than "We are not responsible for bytes we do not own when we do not even know what they are. If they are illegal, let us know and we'll act immediately and assist you in discovering the guilty party."

I don't think 3 is entirely a defense used. It's mostly "hey, if you tell us about something, we'll look at it and fix it if it needs to be"

Mostly because the only other option is to have a 48-72 hour period where uploads are screened and a large staff of screeners well versed in every country's internet related laws on what content is acceptable.

Any live/rapid upload system like a comments board, this forum, or anything else is pretty much impossible to pre-moderate. The Mods on PA can't stop me right now from posting something massively offensive/illegal in this text field. They CAN remove it after the fact, but they can't automagically know I'm about to do it.

The issue in this court case is that the legal system seems to think they should be able to automagically stop me, and removing it the second they see it isn't enough.

3) The deeply rooted assumption that "hey, it's the Internet, we can't be held responsible for what goes on on our servers!"

I'm curious to know how you would change the current situation, without requiring pre-approval for everything posted onto the internet, and thus slowing the internet down to a level of pointlessness, and also requiring millions of legal decisions every day on what should be approved, and so raising the cost of business to the level of unprofitability.

Google should just block Italy for a few days and wait for the reversal.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson

Google should just block Italy for a few days and wait for the reversal.

I like the precedent that would send, if Google's gonna take over the world they might as well start with a country that messed with them first (and is not China). Or, they could buy up Italian corporations and break them up.

Glancing through that article and then doing a few searches, it seems like a really convoluted case. It's all going to hinge on if Foundem changed anything shortly before their KPIs went back up. Because as far as I can see, every web expert that looked at their page went "wow, your SEO sucks, that's why you rank so low", while Foundem seems to think it's Google being out to get them.

Google should just block Italy for a few days and wait for the reversal.

I like the precedent that would send, if Google's gonna take over the world they might as well start with a country that messed with them first (and is not China). Or, they could buy up Italian corporations and break them up.

Ok so we know how we all feel about this but has anyone seen or read anything that would shed some light on whether or not this is a normal or foreseeable interpretation of the Italian law in question?
It might well be that this decision is truly odd even in Italy but on the other hand it might be a perfectly reasonable application of Italian law, which could seem alien to us Anglo types

Ok so we know how we all feel about this but has anyone seen or read anything that would shed some light on whether or not this is a normal or foreseeable interpretation of the Italian law in question?
It might well be that this decision is truly odd even in Italy but on the other hand it might be a perfectly reasonable application of Italian law, which could seem alien to us Anglo types

I don't think such a thing exists. We're talking about a country where you can get out of fraud charges by delaying the trial, since the statute of limitations keeps ticking while the trial progresses.

Yes, we've discussed it you and me(re:Verizon's newsgroups, I believe).
You were completely ignorant in regards of letter of the law regarding ISP and web service providers in the EU or the US then and while I understand that you still hate the situation, there are safe harbor provisions in every communications act out there. Nothing is more reasonable than "We are not responsible for bytes we do not own when we do not even know what they are. If they are illegal, let us know and we'll act immediately and assist you in discovering the guilty party."

Right, we never discussed the letter of the law. I understand safe harbor for user directed content. The dispute is over your assessment that nothing could be more reasonable. It only extends so far. Napster is a perfect example. For things like YouTube/Google Video, we presume that the overall good faith and awesomeness of the service grants them the right to safe harbor. If something like Google Video were to evolve into a web site dominated by criminal content, the law would find a way to kick them right out of this figurative harbor.

I'm not advocating that all Internet content must be moderated. A lot of sites operate that way, where all user content is screened. A lot of sites don't. All I'm saying is that when your company is profiting from ad revenue broadcasting bullies beating up a handicapped child, then there are a few people in this scenario who have even more of a right than you do to be outraged, and you need to toughen your skin and get ready for this kind of shit, and be cognizant of where the gray lines are between safe harbor and snuff. I don't share the defendants opinion of how "ridiculous" this is, despite the fact that I also don't necessarily think they should be found guilty of anything and I don't necessarily think that all user directed content needs to be pre-screened.